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ARMA III & Steam WORKSHOP

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What's not to understand here? If an author of a script doesn't wish his work uploaded on SWS because he dislikes the site, it's his God damn right to demand it to be taken it down or release it without his scripts. It is as simple as that.

Damn straight, but I can voice my opinion that I think it's childish.

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From what I gather from the new subscriber agreement, in 6. B. 2nd bulletpoint they basically limit themselves on the rights they have. So even if in A you grant them a non-exclusive, irrevocable right to use, reproduce, modify, create (...) your User content (...), in B they limit their own rights to "modify or create derivative works from your Workshop Contribution in the following cases:" being make it compatible with steam and workshop functionality and in the case that Valve (or in this case BI) deems necessary to distribute/improve gameplay.

If my interpretation is correct (I am not a lawyer. Is anybody willing to share what is the interpretation of a copyright lawyer regarding User Generated Content and the effects of B in the rights granted in A?), doesn't this deflect most of the concerns put forth my modders since they are stating that the only rights they will obtain are those to modify or create derivative works that are only applicable to ensure the content is compatible with Steam and Workshop functionality and/or modifications to ensure it can be distributed?

I'm just looking for clarification on this, since it's always useful to be able to correctly interpret the language used in EULAs, TOS, Privacy Policies and other legal documents, and to fully understand the position of several community members.

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Seeing that for the foreseeable future only missions can be uploaded I think we have enough time for BI and Valve to talk to each other about this delicate situation. The wording is very opaque to be perfectly honest and I can imagine this being a purposeful act. If there are any "issues" further on down the line then the ambiguity in these statements will definitely hold Valve (and to a certain extent BI) in good stead no matter what the outcome.

Let us not be naïve here, Valve hire legal experts; expert in these fields for these exact eventualities. I doubt Valve will leave anything to chance.

As a caveat, I have not actually used the SWS so I am only going on what certain Devs have said previously and what might be the case a few iterations further on in the development process of the SWS.

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Damn straight, but I can voice my opinion that I think it's childish.

I really don't know. I believe that the script in question has been originally written for ArmA 2 - OA before the steam exclusive distribution has been announced. I believe the biggest concern is the license agreement for SWS to users. Valve's politic in regards should have changed somewhat . . . but it doesn't really . . . they worded their agreement differently but the main questions still remain.

Now there are people who dislike the whole Steam/Valve story and all what's related to and decide to not want anything uploaded on SWS . . . you call it childish I call it a conscious decision. It depends all on the point of view doesn't it?

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yeah, just keep the name the same. at least that's how it worked with Portal 2

edit: actually that's not really how it works. when you go to re-publish, on the left it should list the items already in the workshop, and when you click one, it will give you the option to 'update' it

I updated this post

also it seems the actual pbo file, for missions you subscribe to, is kept in 'the cloud'. you only d/l the image associated with it

Edited by daze23

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I updated this post

also it seems the actual pbo file, for missions you subscribe to, is kept in 'the cloud'. you only d/l the image associated with it

What does that actually mean? Let's say you subscribe to a SP mission. Will you be able to play it off line or do you have to be online to play that particular mission you subscribed to?

I furthermore guess that you won't be able to open the missionpbo and transfer the mission into the editor?

would be interesting to get some more info on this.

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What's not to understand here? If an author of a script doesn't wish his work uploaded on SWS because he dislikes the site, it's his God damn right to demand it to be taken it down or release it without his scripts. It is as simple as that.

Look like small part of A3 modding community very different from what we have in good old OFP time. Back than we made mods to… share it with community (sound strange?). I take my hat off to BIS for making mission/mod sharing much easier for us. More centralized, easy to update, upload, maintain in single place.

If someone doesn’t like his work to be on workshop, he simply… well… not uses it. This is great options, but no one pushing us to use it.

If they mark their work/script/mods like “look but don’t touch/share/useâ€â€¦ no one will bother and we all be fine.

Sorry for my English

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Look like small part of A3 modding community very different from what we have in good old OFP time. Back than we made mods to… share it with community (sound strange?). I take my hat off to BIS for making mission/mod sharing much easier for us. More centralized, easy to update, upload, maintain in single place.

Hmmm.. I think perhaps you are unaware that BI has stated from the beginning that content makers retain the copyright for what they create. The concerns expressed here are nothing new. Users are meerly in doubt as to what to expect with Valve's license. The fact that addon makers' rights have remained intact since the beginning has not affected any 'sharing with the community'. The concerns you bring up are very, very far away from the issues being discussed.

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MO i think some trying hint there of problem like someone release 'script pack' for something to be usable in missions

sometime later in process he decides he dislikes SWS and fill DMCA claim against any work using such scripts ...

imo that would be quite trouble some tactic ...

on other hand it will force everyone who publish anything major on SWS to ensure they get the 'approval' rights in stone before publish :)

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The concerns you bring up are very, very far away from the issues being discussed.

Maybe so. I just feel bad for person who already spend his time to create and share his mission, just to be told later on to remove script he use, just because original creator don’t like SWS and not bother to mention it before. This simply ( 100% agree with DayGlow) … childish

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So now you will have 3 ways to distribute content (missions for now, maybe addons in the future): the old and manual way, PwS and SWS.

Some content will be present in only one or two ways. Addon dependency still is an issue. Mod detection ingame still is an issue (that relies on a 3rd party software) and still requires a game restart to activate them.

Talk about getting people confused, would think that BI got things better after A2-OA-CO Steam and Retail problems, even more when mods are a cornerstone of the series.

But the initiative to make missions easier to make and share is good, more people probably will try their luck with that.

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I think people who claim to be helping the community by releasing missions/scripts for them to use, and then applying arbitrary restrictions on their use is pretty shady. It's like I give you an ice cream, then once you have it in your hand I tell you that you can't eat it. Sounds like trolling to me.

We now have a really cool new feature to enjoy and here we are debating the licencing issues. It's actually much simpler than it needs to be, if you are into contributing to the community and releasing things on the web, don't get upset when people do stuff with a copy of your work.

PS. Can we get back to discussing how to effectively handle addon dependencies in the workshop?

Edited by ssechaud

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We now have a really cool new feature to enjoy and here we are debating the licencing issues. It's actually much simpler than it needs to be, if you are into contributing to the community and releasing things on the web, don't get upset when people do stuff with a copy of your work.

.... +5

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if you are into contributing to the community and releasing things on the web, don't get upset when people do stuff with a copy of your work.

And what work have you done for the community? I bet you'd feel real great if you were to spend your time and effort to put something into the game just to have someone take it, change one thing, then claim that they made it. I'm sure your attitude would change. In its current state, the sites which post mirrors of user generated content and mods are highly moderated and taking another person's work without their permission is not tolerated. If you want to know what it would be like under workshop, look at Skyrim.

Edited by Binkowski

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Just upload missions to SWS. Do not upload mods etc. If you have a mod / script in your mission make sure you put this fact in the description of the mission or at least in the in game briefing. If you don't want to share mods / scripts or even missions then don't, no one is forcing you to. Share stuff like we have been doing since OFP, use a mirroring site. There are plenty out there.

tl;dr:

Don't use SWS, no one is forcing you to.

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It's actually much simpler than it needs to be, if you are into contributing to the community and releasing things on the web, don't get upset when people do stuff with a copy of your work.

You must be a supporter of sites like www.gta4-mods.com, and other commercially exploitive places.

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And what work have you done for the community?

It's irrelevant if I have published work for the community or not, just because you have published work doesn't mean your opinion is any more valid than mine. I happen to have chosen not to publicly release my stuff because I am not ready to do so. But when I do release anything it will be under the Creative Commons Share Alike licence detailed here: http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/CC-BY-SA

I recognise the right to attribution, and I dislike people that take peoples work given for free and try to make financial profits from it, hence my choice of licence. As long as attribution is given and its not for commercial use I see no problem. And in regards to the issue at hand, I don't think any of the above is being broken by sharing a mission on the steam workshop.

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Ah now you add stipulations. From your post I would have thought you meant. " you are into contributing to the community and releasing things on the web, don't get upset when people do stuff with a copy of your work."

When what you really mean is they do stuff that you do not mind them doing.

i.e this is fine with you. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?142427-ARMA2-RU-Wasteland-Sandbox-servers-thread&p=2259932&viewfull=1#post2259932

Then 404games instead of making their own Wasteland they copy-pasted my entire mission without permission but since my server-side wasn't available they took it from Marker. Not only did they take all the features that I made without asking, they also didn't give me any credit what so ever and even more they refuse to credit me as author, coming up with stupid excuses that look like "we changed text and therefore its not your feature anymore" or quote to my request to credit me as author:

My code: http://pastie.org/5466129 Their code: http://pastie.org/5466131 Changing variable name from publicVar_teamkillersList to pvar_teamKillList makes it a complete rewrite according to 404games. List of their bullshit excuses\lies can be continued. Not only they stole my code and try to pass it as theirs, they also distributed it to everyone, claiming themselves as only developers after Tonic.

So to the conclusion of what current Wasteland is and who made it:

TAW_Tonic - original idea and mission

Sa-Matra - expanded Tonic's mission with big array of features

Marker - more improvements to Tonic's mission

The shame list consists of thieving 404games who completely don't respect other people's work and time spent on development and testing.

Why am I writing all this? I never really looked for recognition or something, the only thing I truly care about is making a great enjoyable mission which I did for past 4 months, I just wrote code and enjoyed playing it on our servers. The reason of my concern is that my code is being taken and perfidiously presented as their own. Thank you.

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You must be a supporter of sites like www.gta4-mods.com, and other commercially exploitive places.

As...Eeeehhhh...as websites like those are, at least they are free mods rather than being sold for profit. That is the real problem with others taking work, you can always link to your originals if a headbutting occurs but you run into many dichotomy's if it's free. I'm not going to lie, I wouldn't want others taking credit for my work but I would be a bit flattered to see that they believed it good enough that they wanted to import it into another game..as long as it is kept FREE for owners of said game to use then thats fine by me.

Anywho, this is where most of the concern stems from http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3ds-max-t-90-tank/653306 http://www.armedassault.info/ftp/pics/news/pics1/arma2_tmv7.jpg

Edited by NodUnit

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what you really mean is they do stuff that you do not mind them doing.

What I really mean is what I wrote. The whole wasteland attribution debacle wouldn't be happening if people released their work with appropriate licences, not some quasi-licence that changes on the whim of the authors mood that week. Whatever happened with wasteland, if they didn't give proper attribution and release their derivative work for others to use then yes they have done something wrong, if it was initially released with a proper licence. If they copied it, changed a few variable names and tacked their name onto the end of the attribution list then that is fine. Really all we are arguing about is if you get your name in the attribution list.

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i guess for the time being we can resort to...

addons required below.

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Maybe so. I just feel bad for person who already spend his time to create and share his mission, just to be told later on to remove script he use, just because original creator don’t like SWS and not bother to mention it before. This simply ( 100% agree with DayGlow) … childish

I think we're trying to solve bigger problems here than the implications of the rights that content makers already enjoy. You're making up a scenario and then insulting so far non existent people for perpetrating a non existent act. Surely we can find something more productive to discuss.

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Well thank you for that information. I believe Xeno had his work taken down because he doesn't agree with the implications of the license, and did not have a chance to agree or disagree to Valve's conditions, not that he 'doesn't like SWS'. If that is the case, if anyone wants to continue calling Xeno childish, they can accrue the corresponding infractions.

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Some people dislike the service for whatever reason. It is fair for the author to disallow his work to be hosted there.

In addition in terms of someone using work of someone else, it is essentially down to the license or direct agreement made between author and user.

In other words if Xeno has not added a license that has allowed 3rd party use, and hasn't given the OK to the particular person, it is just fine to have it taken down.

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